Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (52 page)

“We should get Jenny,” Esmeralda whispered as they hurried along the corridor.

“I thought of that,” Tommy said. “Look.”

Mariella and Seth emerged from Seth’s cell.  Like Esmeralda, Seth had changed from
his jumpsuit into surgical scrubs.  Mariella had come down with Tommy, and she’d freed
Seth from his cell with an access card taken from one of the cellblock guards.

Seth looked suspiciously at all three of them—Tommy, who’d always been his enemy in
their past encounters; Esmeralda, who Seth had seen possessed by Ashleigh’s soul;
and Mariella, who had been cooperating with Ward for months.

“If this is a trap, you’re all dead,” Seth told them. “I mean it.”

“It’s not a trap, Seth. The guards could be here any second.” Mariella took Seth’s
arm, and her expression turned to one of horror. “They’ll be here in a minute, a response
team with biohazard masks and automatic rifles.  We have to run!”  She pulled Seth
behind her as she ran north along the wide corridor.

“Who is she?” Esmeralda whispered to Tommy as they started running.

“Mariella,” Tommy said. “She can see the future.”

Tommy had taken a huge risk asking Mariella to help him break Esmeralda free.  Mariella
saw Tommy as someone loyal to Ward, and he was supposed to see her the same way. 
He’d only approached her with the idea because he remembered that she had decided
to escape in their last life.  Tommy no longer cared what happened to himself—he was
determined to help Esmeralda.  So he’d taken the risk, suggesting they could free
Jenny and Seth at the same time.  He had gambled that Mariella wanted to help her
friends.

It was paying off—once they freed Jenny, the five of them would be far more difficult
for the guards to stop than Tommy and Esmeralda would have been on their own.

They passed the guards who’d been on duty at the cellblock desk, one of them now trying
to hide behind a fake potted plant, the other waving his TASER and screaming at shadows
on the ceiling.

From his previous life, Tommy knew every inch of the facility, the side corridors
and maintenance tunnels.  Anything might have changed since then, doors and hallways
could have been sealed, but between Tommy’s memories and Mariella’s ability to see
the future by keeping her hand on Seth’s arm, they found the safest course through
to the lab corridor, avoiding the guards ahead and the heavily armed team pursuing
them from behind.

Mariella predicted that two guards had been stationed in the lab corridor, dressed
in biohazard armor but armed only with TASER guns, unlike the response team coming
up behind them, who were armed with machine guns.  They’d been ordered to stand in
front of the door to Jenny’s lab.

“I’ll go first,” Seth said when they reached the door.  The small guard station by
the lab corridor was unmanned.  Ward was clearly relying on digital surveillance to
replace some of the roaming guard patrols and numerous small guard stations of the
Nazi days.  This also meant that someone was watching, telling the armed response
team exactly where to find them.

Seth closed his eyes for a moment, and his skin slowly took on an unearthly white
glow, making him look almost angelic.  Even his hair gleamed like gold.  He must have
been summoning up his power, turning it up the way Tommy could turn up the fear if
he really wanted to blast someone’s mind apart.

“Tommy, you have to help me,” Seth whispered. “Whatever they do to you, I’ll fix. 
Ready?”

Tommy nodded, and Seth charged through the door, shouting at the top of his lungs,
Tommy running alongside him.  Tommy was ready to lash out, breathe out fear as he’d
done in Charleston, but he held it in for now.  It wouldn’t do much good against the
two guards’ biohazard armor, he thought.

As Seth and Tommy approached, the guards shouted at them to freeze and raised their
yellow stun guns.  Seth pulled ahead, guarding Tommy, and he took an electrified barb
in the chest.  It trailed wire back to the guard’s stun gun, like a sharp little harpoon.

Seth crashed to his knees, his spine snapping back and forth like a whip, foam spilling
from his mouth.  He flopped over onto the tiled floor and lay there like a fish choking
on the air.

Tommy zigged and zagged toward the guards, making it more difficult for the second
guard to get a good shot at him.  While he did, the first guard pulled a long, steel
flashlight from his belt, ready to bash Tommy.

Neither guard expected Seth to leap up from the floor, ripping the stun gun from the
first guard’s hands.  Seth threw himself directly at the second guard, not bothering
to weave and duck like Tommy, and he caught the second TASER barb in his stomach. 
He tumbled again to the floor.

Tommy dodged behind Seth and attacked the first guard, grabbing for the blunt flashlight
in his hand.  He held it up while the guard tried to force it down on Tommy’s head. 
With his other hand, Tommy grabbed for the straps of the guard’s masked helmet, but
the guard’s other arm rose to block him.

While Seth writhed on the floor, the second guard came after Tommy, cracking his steel
flashlight down on Tommy’s head and back.  Tommy held onto the first guard with the
fixation of a rabid dog. 

The blows stopped coming, and he heard the sound of girls screaming.  Through the
blood leaking down into one eye, he saw that Mariella and Esmeralda had attacked the
second guard, Esmeralda trying to wrestle the steel flashlight from his hand, Mariella
ripping at his mask.  When she pulled it off his head, Tommy grabbed the man’s face
and filled him with fear.

The guard crawled away, sobbing and screaming about “Mr. O’Grady’s dog.”  The girls
turned their attention to the first guard, still wrestling with Tommy.  Mariella stripped
his helmet off, while Esmeralda pulled his steel flashlight free and cracked him across
the head.  The guard sank to the floor, unconscious.

The girls helped Seth to his feet.  His blue eyes were dazed, and he smelled like
burnt hair.

“We have to keep moving,” Mariella said. “The real guards are coming.”

Tommy swiped his stolen access card through the slot next to the steel door to Jenny’s
lab, but the little indicator light stayed red.

“This card doesn’t access her lab,” he told the others.

“Tommy, look at you!” Esmeralda touched his face. “You’re bleeding.”

“Maybe this guy can open it.” Seth took the ID card from the unconscious guard and
swiped it through the notch in the reader.  The light flicked from red to green, and
he hauled open the heavy door and ran inside.

Jenny was locked inside a clear-walled cell with its own ventilation system.  The
lights were dim for the night, and the only sound was Jenny’s heart monitor.  Seth
ran to the clear cube and saw her asleep on a hospital bed inside.   He pounded on
the wall beside her.

She awoke slowly, and Seth wondered whether she was heavily medicated.  She blinked
at him while he spoke.

“Jenny, we’re getting out of here,” Seth said. “But we have to hurry.”

“Why’s Tommy here?” Jenny asked.

“He’s helping me escape,” Esmeralda said. “All of us, together.”

“The guards are on the way,” Mariella added. “We don’t have much time.”

“We have to get the baby.” Jenny hurried to the airlock door of her cell, and Seth
ran to meet her.

“You had the baby?” Seth asked. “The baby is...”

“Alive, Seth,” Jenny said. Her eyes glistened. “She made it.  She’s alive.”

“A girl.  And she’s alive.” Seth slowly smiled at Jenny.

“They’re keeping her at the clinic,” Mariella said, pointing  northwest. “I’ve been
listening.”

“There’s nowhere to swipe the access card,” Seth said, studying the door’s control
panel, which had a small numbered keypad. “It’s a combination lock.”

“I’ve been watching them do it every day,” Jenny told him. “It changes every week,
but right now I’m pretty sure it’s 335598.”

Seth keyed in the code and pulled open the outer door.  He ran into the airlock and
opened the inner door, and Jenny jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders
and holding him tight.

“Seth, it’s been so awful without you,” she whispered. “Horrible.”

“I missed you so much,” he said. “But the baby’s really okay?”

“A healthy little girl.” Jenny smiled through her tears and kissed him.

“We
really
have to get going now,” Mariella said, touching Seth’s arm. 

“Stay where you are!” a voice commanded over the intercom.  This time, it sounded
like Ward. “Guards are on the way.”

The five of them hurried out the door.  Mariella again watched the ever-shifting future
and picked out the safest route through the base. 

They made it to the short corridor in front of the clinic’s closed double doors.

“We’re done!” Mariella shook her head. “The clinic is full of staff, and the armed
guards are almost here...” Everyone could hear the sound of boots echoing on tile.
“I don’t see what we can do.”

“Tommy, can you panic the medical staff?” Seth asked. “Send them out here to block
the guards?”

“Maybe.” Tommy cast a worried look behind them.

“Let’s go!” Jenny opened the door and led the way in, Seth at her side, followed by
Tommy, Esmeralda, and Mariella.

The medical staff were already in a panic, the doctors and lab techs running out to
the front desk area, where the nurses at the desk were on their feet and shouting. 
It looked like everyone had just been warned that the escaped prisoners were on the
way.

Several of them screamed at the sight of the five paranormals charging into the clinic. 
All eyes went to Jenny, but it was Tommy who attacked, unleashing a plume of dark
red droplets from his mouth, which settled over the medical staff like a mist of blood. 

“Where is my baby?” Jenny screamed at the terrified nurses, letting the pox blister
her face. “Where?”

“Down that hall...” A nurse pointed to a door, her finger shaking. “Last exam room,
very last on your left.”

“There are bombs all over this base!” Mariella shouted. “You have five minutes to
get outside the walls, or you’re all dead!  Run that way!” She pointed to the open
doors through which they’d entered, and the fear-infected medical staff ran out screaming,
a dozen people or more.  Esmeralda slammed the doors behind them.

“That won’t block them for long,” Jenny said, looking anxiously toward the door that
led to her baby.

“Do you see all of them wearing gas masks?” Tommy asked Mariella.

“More than half of them, rows of them,” Mariella said. “There are some extra guards
near the back who aren’t wearing any...maybe they didn’t have time to suit up or they
joined at the last minute...but...”

“That’s good enough,” Tommy said, approaching the doors. “You’ll want to barricade
these doors after I leave.”

“You’ll get killed.” Esmeralda touched his face. “You can’t do that.”

“I just want you to get out safe,” he told her.  He pressed the gold Indian-head coin
into her hand, the one they’d traded back and forth all their life.  “I’ll see you
again.  You know this isn’t the end.  Maybe I won’t be such an asshole next time around.”

“I doubt that.” Esmeralda smiled, but her eyes gleamed with tears.  She kissed him,
then held the coin against her heart.

“I love you, Esmeralda,” he said.

“I love you, too,” she whispered back, and he couldn’t help smiling.  At least he
would die with those words in his ears.

Tommy steeled himself, then hurried out through one of the doors, closing it again
behind him.  He hoped they would take his advice about blocking the clinic from the
inside.  If his attack worked, the entire base would soon become chaotic and dangerous.

The response team already filled the corridor, but they were a little disorganized
as they parted for the crazed doctors and nurses to pass through them.  Tommy wished
he’d had the foresight to dress himself in medical scrubs, too, instead of a t-shirt
and jeans.  It would have helped him blend with the escaping mob.

Instead, the guards in their biohazard masks shouted and raised their machine guns
at him.

Tommy breathed deep and exhaled, pushing out the fear from deep inside of him, giving
them both barrels, everything he had.  He poured all his energy into it.  There was
no point in holding anything back now—he doubted he had more than a few seconds to
live.

The mist of fear flooded the corridor, so dense and dark that the light in the hallway
turned deep red, painting everyone and everything the color of fresh blood.

“General Kilpatrick’s orders!” Tommy shouted. “Everyone in a biohazard mask is the
enemy!  Shoot on sight!”

His shouting brought the attention of all the masked guards, who turned their guns
on him.  The support guards at the back, armed but without biohazard masks, shouting
in fear and opened fire on the rows of guards ahead of them.  The body armor and helmets
shielded their torsos and heads, but the bullets sliced through their arms and legs. 
The masked guards began to fall, taken from the rear by surprise, flurries of machine-gun
rounds hammering their backs hard enough to crack their ribs through their armor.